Last week saw the commencement of RecycleMania, a nationwide event for universities to compete and improve efforts in waste reduction. All waste and recycled material, including compost, will be measured at the end of each week. This Sunday will see the first tallying of scores for all schools and is a chance to see where EMU stands in the rankings.

RecycleMania’s mission is to “provide tools and opportunities that inspire, empower, and mobilize colleges and universities to improve efforts to reduce or eliminate waste,” and it does it all through “fair and friendly competition.”

“RecycleMania makes students, staff, and faculty think more about the waste they produce,” said Matthew Freed, EMU’s recycling media coordinator. “Everything we use and throw away ends up somewhere, and that somewhere is usually a rapidly-growing trash mountain just north of Harrisonburg — the landfill.”

Two years ago, in 2016, EMU was the champion of RecycleMania in Virginia. EMU’s recycling rate that year also placed 13th nationally among schools with 2,500 or fewer students.

There are 14 schools in Virginia participating in RecycleMania — four of them other ODAC schools. RecycleMania runs over an eight-week period each spring. The weights of trash and recycling are recorded for each day and sent on Sunday to be counted and compared to the results of the surrounding schools. This allows for each school to see how their recycling per capita compares with other schools in the area. It will also look at the percentage of total waste and which school produced the least amount of trash and recycling.

RecycleMania promotes recycling on campus, hopefully leading to greater awareness among students and faculty to their waste habits. “Ultimately, individuals consuming less, leading to a decreasing waste stream, would be what I would most like to see come from RecycleMania,” said Freed.

At EMU in particular, bins for food scraps and other compostables have been placed along each dorm for easy access to students. There will be a competition amongst the dorms of which can compost the most. Students from the Earth Keepers Club are heading the effort to gather and weigh the recycling. First-year Aaron Horst and senior Sarah Longenecker are biking everything this week.

The best feature of EMU’s recycling regimen is the composting, and is far more effective than traditional recycling, which Freed describes as “not much more than a band-aid on overconsumption.”

At the end of this week, the first week of RecycleMania, students will be able to access the official page of RecycleMania and see where EMU places after the first round of weighings.